About SSSMG

Mission

The Society for the Study of Sound and Music in Games (SSSMG) is an international organization dedicated to the development of sophisticated understandings of sound and music in video games from any and all perspectives.

The SSSMG actively seeks to include both practitioners (such as composers and sound designers) and researchers. Designed to be a resource for diverse groups of scholars and practitioners, the society will maintain an actively updated bibliography on its website, award an annual prize for academic articles in the field, and provide communication between scholarly and professional organizations.

To build a large and diverse body of knowledge, membership in the SSSMG is inter-professional and interdisciplinary, open to anyone involved with sound and music in video games. We welcome many approaches to the study of game audio, including (but not limited to) historical research, musical analysis, ethnographies, psychological studies of perception, cultural studies, media studies, reception, and practice-based inquiry.

The Society for the Study of Sound and Music in Games acts as a central hub for the emerging academic, and professional, communities of people working with video game audio. Currently, SSSMG comprises three core groups:

The Ludomusicology Research Group was founded by Michiel Kamp, Tim Summers and Mark Sweeney in August 2011 as an inter-university research initiative dedicated to the study of game music. Based in the UK, our aim is to promote inter-university academic collaboration, act as a hub or point-of-contact to advertise the research of the group members (and of other academics working in the field) and serve as a general attempt to create a coherent direction and body of knowledge for this sub-discipline.

To achieve these aims, we organize an annual international conference on videogame music, provided the first widely accessible keyworded bibliography resource on our website, and host regular blog articles by guest contributors about videogame music and sound. We have also acted as a central hub in bringing together a number of publications including a double special issue of The Soundtrack and an edited volume of essays: Ludomusicology: Approaches to Video Game Music.

The North American Conference on Video Game Music draws together scholars in the fields of musicology, music theory, ethnomusicology, media studies, sound studies, composition, and more to discuss all aspects of music in video games. Topics at past conferences have included case studies of influential games and composers, technology and its impact on game music, teaching game music, analyzing game music, and music’s relationship to game narratives.

Audio Mostly is an interdisciplinary conference on design and experience of interaction with sound that prides itself on embracing applied theory and reflective practice. Its annual gatherings bring together thinkers and doers from academia and industry that share an interest in sonic interaction and the use of audio for interface design. This remit covers product design, auditory display, computer games and virtual environments, new musical instruments, and education and workplace tools. It further includes fields such as the psychology of sound and music, cultural studies, system engineering, and everything in between in which sonic interaction plays a role. The conferences are a lively and sociable mix of presentations, posters, and workshops and all papers are peer reviewed and published in the ACM Digital Library.

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